Earlville Opera House hosting 3 new art exhibits beginning Jan. 26

EARLVILLE -- Earlville Opera House kicks off its 2013 gallery season with its Winter Celebration of Central New York artists on Saturday, Jan. 26, from noon to 3 p.m. with light refreshments and live music provided by Tumbleweed Gumbo.

This Central New York band plays cajun, Celtic, and various flavors of American roots music. Musicians include Liz Friedel, fiddle and vocals; Steve Blais on accordion, guitar, bodhran, 'tit fer and rubboard; Larry Jordan, guitar and vocals; and Werner Koegst on stand-up bass. The afternoon will also feature artist talks and KidsART activities.

In the East Gallery, explore the new mixed media paintings by Christopher McEvoy in "Transformer." McEvoy, an assistant professor of art at SUNY Oswego, is an artist who challenges viewers to see and think about what is not clearly defined as he creates through his paintings a visual dialogue between the intangible and corporeal, entropy and unity, destruction and rejuvenation. Neither fully abstract nor representative, his art and the act of painting document the struggle between interior and exterior worlds, between the visceral and personal as related to physical existence.

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McEvoy received his MA in painting from Brandeis University and his MFA in painting from Boston University. He was awarded a Starr Scholar Fellowship to the Royal Academy of Art in London, and has completed residencies at Vermont Studio Center and the Ragdale Foundation. He has shown his work throughout New York, as well as Boston and London.

In the Arts Café Gallery, Henry J. Drexler's acrylic paintings in "Rural Transformations" examine the Central New York landscape. For more than 31 years, in his studio near the dairy farm where he was raised in Norwich, Drexler has been capturing the beauty and detail of rural life in Central New York's Chenango River Valley, the Adirondacks, Bucks County, Pa., and Middlebury, Vt. His canvases are impressionistic landscapes that seem to simultaneously convey both the history and future of a place, as well as its essence at a particular point in time.

With a BA in history from Cornell University, a JD from Syracuse University and an LLM from New York University, Drexler was self-taught as an artist, but took several art classes at Cornell and at Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute in Utica. He has received several awards for his work, and has exhibited at galleries in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Connecticut, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, as well as at the Art In Embassies Program at the U.S. Department of State and at the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, both in Washington, DC.

In the West Gallery: "The Opera Goes to College" features artists from Cazenovia College. Central New York is home to several outstanding liberal arts colleges, and each of them has exceptional art departments with accomplished artists on their faculty. Through this inaugural exhibit, EOH showcases the work of several talented faculty members of Cazenovia College in this special invitational show.

The late winter exhibits in the three galleries at the Earlville Opera House Arts Center run through March 2. The EOH galleries are located at 18 E. Main St. in Earlville and are open Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday, noon to 3 p.m. Admission is free, but donations are welcome.